Jim Cramer - Investment Advice

Work, Careers and Money
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Stewart is accusing CNBC of primarily aiming for entertainment, while willfully suppressing information that would help their investing viewers. I don’t really agree with him. However, if one accepts that premise, I don’t think one can brush it off as their way of making money. Legally, that may be fine; but, not ethically – not if they truly position themselves as helping investors, while not attempting to do so, and actively suppressing information that would be helpful to investors.

I think that clarifies it a bit, but I still don’t see what the big deal is. CNBC is in business to make money. The way CNBC makes money is by attracting large amounts of viewers. The way CNBC can attract large amounts of viewers is by airing the interesting, engaging and entertaining programming that viewers demand about finance, e.g. Cramer’s show. As you say, there is nothing I have seen on Cramer’s show which leads me to believe that he is intentionally doing anything. What would be his motivation anyway?

Stewart claims that CNBC lets executives come on air and spread false news about their companies. So what? Has this idiot ever listened to an earnings call? Executives always act like their company is fine, or in a condition to improve in the near future, despite what the facts are. Often times that’s actually what executives believe, just like the small business owner who won’t admit that his business is failing. That’s why we have these people on Wall St. called research analysts. Stewart could make his case much more convincing if he brought in some guy who heard a recommendation on CNBC, and then ran as fast as he could to the phone to call his broker and make a trade. I suspect he won’t find a single person on earth.

Stewart makes money by offering a comedy show. His show is not a news show, nor is it done in the public interest. Incidentally, he offers a lot of news on his show and presumably does things that interest the public (this CNBC feud for example). But because CNBC covers financial markets, he thinks that things should be different and he feels justified in calling out the network?

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Well, consider this exchange (from memory, close but not verbatim):

Stewart: I know you want to make [finance/investing] interesting; but, it’s not a fucking game! That makes me angry…

[Earlier, he spoke talking about the fact that people have lost tons of money in their 401-Ks.]

Cramer: Absolutely, we can do a better job…

At this point, Cramer could have said: “Are you nuts! Our show is primarily entertainment. We don’t expect people to use the things we say in their actual investing.”

Why didn’t Cramer respond like that?

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Why didn’t Cramer respond like that?

Because he’s such a transparently dishonest prick. Who in their right mind watches that show anyway?

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I was listening to Peter Schiff’s podcast this week and he mentioned the Daily Show was episode about CNBC and how none of their analyst saw the recession coming. He pointed out that he is frequently on CNBC and has been predicting this very recession for years. He requested an interview but he said the Daily show kept coming up with “unusual “reasons why they could not have him on.

It seems that the daily show didn’t want Schiff screwing up their rant and wants it to appear that no one saw this coming.

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It seems that the daily show didn’t want Schiff screwing up their rant and wants it to appear that no one saw this coming.

Well, yes. The Daily Show is a comedy show which goofs on the media from a liberal perspective. I think Stewart would have no problem admitting that he can’t really take on Schiff in a serious debate. But he doesn’t do serious debates, he does comedy: The reason why he had Cramer on is because everybody knows him, he’s so easy to parody.(It wasn’t to give it an honest try in debating him) If he were to attack Peter Schiff the same way, people would stare and boo, because it would come across as unfounded.

Basically, there is no reason to have serious ecoomists on the Daily Show.

And I really don’t think there’s a need to publicly challenge John Stewart and his views. If Schiff wishes to challenge someone, challenge the idiots who accept his views as facts and news (if there are such people, I’m not sure there are). Stewart is doing a legitimate job-it is called satire. He isn’t running for office, or giving out advice and opinions, the way Al Franken or O’Reilly and Cramer are.

The best one could do against John Stewart is not come across as comical on television.(the way Peter Schiff would look, getting up in arms about views expressed on Comedy Central.) Then, the only way he can attack you is by ruining his own show, and exposing himself as a target. I doubt he’ll do that after all these years.

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Well, yes. The Daily Show is a comedy show which goofs on the media from a liberal perspective. I think Stewart would have no problem admitting that he can’t really take on Schiff in a serious debate. But he doesn’t do serious debates, he does comedy: The reason why he had Cramer on is because everybody knows him, he’s so easy to parody.(It wasn’t to give it an honest try in debating him) If he were to attack Peter Schiff the same way, people would stare and boo, because it would come across as unfounded.

Basically, there is no reason to have serious ecoomists on the Daily Show.

Peter Schiff mentioned in his podcast that comedy central was looking for people who were frequently on CNBC. He mentioned to them that he was on CNBC especially the Kudlow report. They gave him a bunch of BS why he could not be on and then was ignored.

The problem with this is that although this is a comedy show and satire it is not being viewed as such. People are taking the Cramer interview very seriously and outside the investment community he is viewed as one of the best there is because he is so well known. It’s much like how people associate Objectivism with Alan Greenspan in the last twenty years. They take a dope like Cramer and show him to the world and say here is the greedy business man short sided and clueless.

Checkout this article there are many more like it.

Will the Stewart/Cramer Battle Be the Death of CNBC?

I guess my main problem is that it is taking on more than a comedy show and people are viewing Stewart as a serious straight taking journalist. They don’t realize that Cramer was a liberal straw man and that the show is deliberately one sided.

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Peter Schiff mentioned in his podcast that comedy central was looking for people who were frequently on CNBC. … They take a dope like Cramer and show him to the world and say here is the greedy business man short sided and clueless.

Exactly. It would destroy Stweart’s thesis to put on anyone who has been a bear for a while. In fact, there is no way he could have made the same thesis work with his audience if he had on someone more representative of CNBC than Cramer: say any of the actual CNBC reporters. He could not accuse them of entertainment as easily, could not have blamed them as much for being “in” on “shenanigans”; also, they could have told him about the naysayers – like Schiff, Faber, Rogers – to whom they had offered a platform.

I guess my main problem is that it is taking on more than a comedy show and people are viewing Stewart as a serious straight taking journalist.

The irony is this: what Cramer is to investing, Stewart is to news.

Maybe it is a sign on the times: I hear that Obama wants to come on TV to talk about the economy, and he’s considering Leno.

This “dumbing down” is dangerous in the sense that the dumber the mob, the worse the mob-rule.

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This might be a little late, but if you didn’t hear last week, there is some was a feud between (Comedy Central’s) The Daily Show’s Jon Stuart and (CNBC’s) Mad Money’s Jim Cramer.

The two sat down for an interview and here it is, totally uncut.

http://blog.indecisionforever.com/2009/03/…show-interview/

I didn’t really take sides in this debate because both made good and bad points, but in this interview I find myself disagreeing with Stuart more.

For instance,

As far as “seeing it coming” on behalf of CNBC, I don’t think you can blame them because there have been many indicators indicating many things. The inverted yield curve appeared before this recession as did all the others in the past, but the “liberal” media sources didn’t seem to care much and the one and only big “conservative” news station, Fox, was too busy reporting crazy celebrity antics. Basically the signs were there, or the best signs we have, but no one in CNBC or otherwise seemed to report it too much. So you can’t lay this on the feet of CNBC.

(I could be wrong with this. This is based off my casual watching of the news over the past few years.)

The big thing that bothered me was how Stuart was beratting “long term savings” and essentially saying it doesn’t work and equating the stock market to get-rich-quick informercials. The difference between the two is the stock market is pegged to real value being created , what Stuart called “actual hard work” that hard work on behalf of millions of Americans translates more value being created for firms, which leads to a higher stock price, which leads to a better investment, which leads to people being able to make their money grow along with the rest of the economy.

Cramer really pulled his punches, and Stuart got a free ride to sit there and berat him about something Cramer knows way more about. I think that’s really what bothered me the most. Stuart has his head up his ass sometimes and thinks he knows more. Sometimes he makes good points, but (at least in my opinion) he never quite demonstrates his superior knowledge. Hence, why is a comedian and not a serious journalist. Although, the irony is that serious journalists make the same mistakes as comedians.

Over all, I’m not to happy with Comedy Central right now because of the mistreatment of Rand and now this.

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Discussed here…

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I watched the show after hearing so much hype about it, and I agree that Stewart was berating the stock market and hinting at the illegitimacy of long term trading. Cramer was definitely holding punches, and even admitted some guilt, or it seemed that way; I think it was probably this guilt that made him look like he was just throwing himself to the wolves to be torn apart. Cramer didn’t seem to be going on the show to argue about anything, solely judging by his performance on the show; maybe his whole purpose for going on the show was to throw himself to the wolves, in some sort of attempt at atonement for himself and CNBC, and to drop the issue that Stewart started and which Cramer reacted.

Although, I’m not a market expert by any means, I think Stewart did have a good point in criticizing Cramer, as well as his peers (Financial Broadcast Entertainment) in general, for being focused too much in entertainment instead of giving sound financial advice; not painting the whole picture for their audience, but instead continuing on, giving bullish advice, presumably for entertainment purposes. This entertainment was recently expressed by Cramer and other CNBC analysts, after the Fed’s recent actions on 18 Mar 2009: Moments after the Fed’s announcement, the stock market went into a buying frenzy, and all of the analysts were insisting that investors better ‘get in’ before it’s too late; on one show occurring during the frenzy, Cramer got animated, stood from his chair, and started calling Bernanke a genius. Of course, as the day went on, the frenzy slowed, and talk became less positive; on the following day, the talk was even less positive. Probably one of the problems Cramer has with defending himself, his show, as well as other shows on CNBC, is that he doesn’t want to admit to this entertainment factor because it may cause one to discredit the programming.